Day 122: Grace Jones – Nightclubbing
It’s New Year’s Eve, or Hogmanay here in Scotland, so I wanted something fun to listen to while I get ready. I’m toeing a fine line of us wanting to get an early start but me wanting to stay up late enough to catch some of Sir Andrew Cohen getting blackout drunk on American TV. With about a 4pm kick-off time to our evening’s activities, we’ll see how that one plays out.
Album cover courtesy of Island Records
I chose Grace Jones’ new wave post-disco classic Nightclubbing to accompany my early evening, and I couldn’t have chosen better. Hardly surprising since it’s Grace Jones, but the album is just cool. Released in 1981, it’s her fifth studio album and it has earned a well-deserved place in the pantheon of pop due to its unique blend of genres and sounds, with producer Chris Blackwell saying "I wanted a rhythmic reggae bottom, aggressive rock guitar, atmospheric keyboards in the middle, and Grace on top."
Her previous records had been more disco-oriented, but because of the disco backlash, Grace Jones was pivoting to a new sound and image on Nightclubbing. She had adopted the androgynous look that she later became known for and that she made fashionable at the time. In the spoken-word opening track “Walking In the Rain” she says she’s “Feeling like a woman / looking like a man / Sounding like a no-no / Mating when I can,” and the almost retrofuturistic sound is highlighted by the slightly alien and detached way that she sings it. From the beginning, the record is one of a kind.
All of it is just astonishingly unique. In different hands, the incredibly camp “Pull Up To The Bumper” could become a bit of a joke, but with her delivering the car-themed sex allegories with such severity, you feel like her heart is really in it. She did once try to dispel that the song is not necessarily about what is originally seems to be about, saying “I think it means whatever you want it to” — yeah, no. I don’t buy it, I just don’t think she left that much up for interpretation.
There’s a reason why so many modern pop stars – Beyoncé, Kylie, Björk, Lady Gaga, etc. – cite her as an influence, her take on new wave and sophisti-pop is immaculate. There are so many different things on the record, from the Argentinian tango cover "I've Seen That Face Before (Libertango)" to her version of Iggy Pop’s “Nightclubbing,” every part of the album has some sort of magic that only Grace Jones has. Especially when watching videos of her performing, you get the feeling that no one is doing it like her.
I just find myself wanting to describe every part of the record as cool, but it just is. If there’s one cool person on earth, it’s Grace Jones. When she was together with Dolph Lundgren, they looked otherworldly, I mean look at them. But Dolph complained that the relationship was exhausting as she’d bring ladies home for orgies even though he had work in the morning, saying “It’s great in theory but when you have to get up and fight Sylvester Stallone in the morning it’s not such a good thing” – we all have our crosses to bear. Nightclubbing is easily a 9/10.
